PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A frightening new aftershock Wednesday forced more earthquake survivors to live on the capital’s streets or sent them fleeing to perhaps even worse conditions in the countryside.
A flotilla of rescue vessels, meanwhile, led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort, converged on the capital. They are helping fill gaps in still-lagging global efforts to bring water, food and medical help to hundreds of thousands of people who are surviving in makeshift tents.
The strongest tremor since Haiti’s cataclysmic Jan. 12 earthquake struck at 6:03 a.m., just before sunrise, while many were still sleeping. The 5.9-magnitude aftershock lasted only seconds but panicked thousands of Haitians.
Rubble tumbled and dust rose anew from government buildings around the plaza near the collapsed presidential palace. Parents gathered up children and ran.
Up in the hills, where U.S. troops were helping thousands of homeless, people bolted from their tents. Jajoute Ricardo, 24, came running from his house, fearing its collapse.
“Nobody will go to their house now,” he said, as he sought a tent of his own. “It is chaos, for real.”
A slow vibration intensified into side-to-side shaking that lasted about eight seconds — compared with last week’s far stronger initial quake that went on for 30 seconds.
Throngs again sought out small, ramshackle “tap-tap” buses to take them away from the city. On Port-au-Prince’s beaches, more than 20,000 people looked for boats to carry them down the coast, the local Signal FM radio reported.
But the desperation may actually be deeper outside the capital, closer to last week’s quake epicenter.
“We’re waiting for food, for water, for anything,” Emmanuel Doris-Cherie, 32, said in Leogane, 25 miles southwest of Port-au-Prince.
Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and sailors were deploying to that town and to Jacmel on the south coast to support relief efforts.
U.S. troops — some 11,500 soldiers, Marines and sailors onshore and offshore as of Wednesday and expected to total 16,000 by the weekend — could be seen slowly ratcheting up control over parts of the city.
Small signs of normalcy rippled over Port-au-Prince: Street vendors had found flowers to sell to those wishing to honor their dead. One or two money-transfer agencies had reopened to receive wired money from Haitians abroad. Officials said banks would open later this week.
